Wireless communication is very common for private and business uses, and many businesses depend on this technology. In this context, a person driving a car often receives a call on his/her mobile phone or needs to call someone from his/her mobile phone. However, it is very dangerous (and even forbidden in some countries) to call or to answer phone calls while driving a car and it is recommended for drivers to switch off their mobile phones. Countries have established laws specifying the way and conditions mobile phones can or cannot be used in vehicles. However, in case of an accident, it is extremely difficult or even impossible for the police or an insurance company to legally determine whether or not a mobile phone was used in an involved vehicle at the time the accident occurred. It may also be very difficult for the driver to legally prove whether or not he/she was using his/her mobile phone at the time of the accident.
To solve this problem, it would be desirable to record and transmit in an accurate and auditable way, relevant physical information relative to the vehicle such as speed, time, and geographical position, when the driver of a vehicle places or receives a call with his/her wireless phone.
The problem to solve is to transmit to a safe and trusted organisation such as a telecommunication service provider, the values of one or more physical parameters related to a vehicle each time a communication is established with a wireless phone within the vehicle.
The system for transmitting the values of these parameters to a telecommunication service provider must be able to certify the correctness and integrity of these values at the time a wireless communication took place. The system must be reliable and trusted in any circumstances.
Furthermore, the system must be “universal,” and must not depend on the telephone network, the telephone operator, or the country in which the system is operating.
To limit the costs, the system must be easy to implement without impacting the architecture and design of existing communication apparatus.
The aforementioned problems of recording one or more vehicle parameters have already been addressed in the literature and various implementations exist. For instance, trucks are equipped with various recording systems. However, data recorded by these systems cannot be correlated with the telephone calls received in the vehicle or sent from the vehicle. Furthermore, since these systems are installed in the trucks, it is impossible to guarantee a full inviolability of data. Generally, only the speed is recorded with the time.
In conclusion, none of the aforementioned prior art techniques addresses the problem of correlating one or more physical parameters related to a moving vehicle with the occurrence of a wireless communication with a mobile phone.